Heretofore configuration of a network device or a multiplicity of network devices, such as a wired or wireless network switch and one or a constellation of access point devices and other devices and/or subsystems that may be directly or indirectly connected or coupled with the network switch, have presented economic and intellectual challenges to network administrators. These challenges may become particularly apparent when a network spans the world, particularly where headquarters staff, management systems, and network administrators responsible for initial network configuration, network configuration modification, and/or network expansion are located in a different time zone, speak a different language, or are separated from local network administrators by a wide area network (WAN), such as the Internet.
While configuring a network device is not an extraordinarily difficult task for a trained network administrator, it may require some understanding of network device characteristics, network configuration, and/or network software, and often an ability to diagnose and trouble-shoot non-functioning devices or the network, such e.g., when there are two network devices that for initially unknown reasons appear to have the same or conflicting IP addresses.
In some situations, it may be possible for a network administrator to consult with a somewhat technically untrained lay person, such as a worker on the floor of a factory or warehouse, an office administrator, or other non-technical person, to configure network devices by talking over the telephone perhaps with the help of a computer link, however doing so for more than a few devices or indeed for dozens or hundreds of devices would be so administratively time consuming and costly that it becomes impractical.
Another attempted solution has been to pre-configure network devices at a site where network administrators are resident before reshipping the network devices to a remote location where they will operate. This may sometimes be referred to a staging or partially staging the devices or network.
Another attempted solution has been to pre-configure the devices with required configuration information at a place of manufacture and ship directly to the remote site for installation. However, this requires expertise and higher cost associated with customization for each device, and does not solve the problem of further configuring additional devices in a device tree starting (or ending) from the configured device. Thus, this approach only partially satisfies the requirements for a static network configuration. In addition, it present a security problem since the configuration information including any security information required for access to the network would be exposed at the point of manufacture and susceptible to compromise.
These and other problems become particularly acute when the network device to be configured is a wireless network device and where non-secure communication of device configuration and/or protocols used by the device and network would expose the network to compromise and vulnerability to outside attack. For these and other reasons there remains a need for a device, network architecture, and methods for configuring one, a plurality of, or indeed hundreds of similar or different network devices that are simple, reliable, and secure.